1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to methods and systems supporting network-based legal billing.
2. Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 6,622,128 (the '128 patent) discloses a process by which litigation or legal billing may be both recorded and monitored in conjunction with budgetary constraints. Legal work products and expenses are logged by a user and recorded in a sortable database. Financial expectations (in the form of budget guidelines) held by an insurance carrier or client can be continuously kept in mind, while time and expenses accrue from an attorney's or legal team's efforts. As time or expenses are entered, corresponding budget information may be displayed. A unified interface provides easy browsing, data entry, and report generation. However, the basic billing model is a conventional hourly rate multiplied by a number of billable hours.
U.S. Patent Application No. 20050203814 (the '814 application) describes a litigation cost management system that provides modules for outlining the process of litigation, establishing pricing variables to each step of the litigation, all at the outset of the case. A case budget is then generated and the case is managed by outside counsel based upon the agreed upon budget and process. When exceptions occur during the course of litigation, outside counsel electronically submits requests for new work to corporate counsel, which in turn can be approved or denied. Point and click billing allows immediate simplistic invoicing which requires no review by corporate counsel as the work performed has already been approved. Statistical reporting provides corporate counsel with real time analysis of all the cases that are in the system. The '814 application describes a legal budgeting and cost management system; but there is no provision for changing the billing model.
U.S. Patent Application No. 20010034675 (the '675 application) describes methods and systems for tracking and approving legal expenses using a legal expense tracking system are disclosed. The method includes selecting a legal matter identifier for the legal work, engaging an outside counsel regarding planned legal work through a prompt, prompting the outside counsel to input data relating to expenses received from a legal services invoice, prompting a user for an approval of submitted legal invoices, and generating legal expense reports. However, again the '675 application does not describe a legal billing system that uses an unconventional billing model.
Thus, a method and system for legal billing using a variety of billing models is needed.